Halloween

What a week! Austin was gone to London for work, my mom was in town visiting and helping with the kids, and the real drama was our car got broken into and had the GPS stolen and then also had the battery die and another window need to be repaired (this could easily be an entire and fairly long entry by itself, but I am not up for re-living all that went on this week. Although we've had some pretty busy and stressful weeks lately, I wouldn't say any of them have been bad....this one, though, was definitely just plain bad!).

Friday morning Ainsleigh's pre-school had a costume parade. They walk from the school to the K&W Cafeteria (restaurant) next door and parade through while all the people clap for them. Ainsleigh was Maleficent (click here for a previous post on the back-story). If you're not familiar with this sorcerer, she is the villain from Sleeping Beauty and you can read up on her here.

Our interpretation, take 1:

(click to enlarge)

Given the car issues, I didn't quite have this all the way "right" for the pre-school parade, but still a good debut!

Her class:

With a few finishing touches (including a light-up staff and sparkly shoes that she has been wanting for about a year and a half) she was all set to go trick-or-treating. She insisted on her orange jack-o-lantern socks.
Ripken was going to be a bird for Halloween (see here for the previous post explaining this selection). A little background on Ripken before getting to his Halloween pictures. When you say "Rippy, smile!" he makes this face--all scrunched up. We call it his "stink face."

So that's why, in this picture, he's making quite the face on the left.:

(click to enlarge)

The dynamic duo:

Trick-or-treating is pretty easy here in the apartment buildings: lit hallways, short walks, and high density. For all intents and purposes this was Ripken's first participatory Halloween. He was definitely confused by the whole thing. He loved his bird costume, but wasn't so sure about everyone else's. He also didn't get taking candy from someone and then putting it into his pumpkin. He wanted to hold onto it so he kept as many things in his hands as he could manage. When he couldn't hold any more, he would put the melted candy that he had been carrying around into the person's bowl and take a different one.

(click to enlarge)

They had a contest for who had the best decorated door/entry to their apartment (off the interior hall of the building). This is our friend who watches Ripken some mornings while Ainsleigh and Tracy are at school. You can't fully appreciate it in the picture, but they decorated the hall all around their entry as a graveyard. There was a coffin spanning the alcove in front of the front door and she is holding a shovel. Her husband was (suffocating) inside the coffin and the kids had to knock on the lid and then the mummy would reach a hand out the coffin and give them their candy. Ainsleigh was not too sure and wanting to skip the whole thing until we told her it was Marianne. Ripken never did quite figure out who she was. Theirs was definitely the best door we saw!

After trick-or-treating through three of the buildings we headed home. First we stopped at this little building that is right when you pull into the complex, which Ainsleigh says is Maleficent's castle. So we got some pictures of her at her castle (click to enlarge):

This is the third year we've trick-or-treated at Baity Hill (the previous 2 we went with Ainsleigh's friend Emma who used to live here). Next year will be the first time we do "real" trick-or-treating outside in our soon-to-be neighborhood. Ainsleigh says she is going to be a butterfly next year and a T-Rex the year after. Stay tuned!